Well, maybe this is more directed to a guy in my league who hates steals, but here we go anyways:

Why do you undervalue Beltran's steals so much for real life purposes? The knock on steals and steal attempts is that they are more often detrimental to the team than beneficial, and when they are beneficial the marginal benefit of that extra base is not that great. But with Beltran, when he steals, the base is almost automatic. In 25 attempts (up to the minute ) since coming to the NL, Beltran has been successful 25 times! And before that, in KC, he only had 3 steal attempts thwarted in about 20 attempts. If a player can have that great a success rate in doing anything, then of course they should do it. So please, dont say Beltran isnt as good as Edmonds when his basically gets an extra base whenever he runs.

I, personally, am a Moneyball guy. The statistal theory says you have to be successful on x% of steals for it to be a good strategy, and few people are successful that often. Beltran, however, is nearly always successful, so I am all for running him and think he's very valuable IRL.

Beltran will be #1 in the fantasy baseball next year if he signs with the Yankees. And probably no matter where he is. I don't know how many times I've said this, but wait and see. There isn't a single player I wouldn't trade for Bletran straight up.

LBJackal wrote:Beltran will be #1 in the fantasy baseball next year if he signs with the Yankees. And probably no matter where he is. I don't know how many times I've said this, but wait and see. There isn't a single player I wouldn't trade for Bletran straight up.

Funny you should say that. I had a guy in one of my keeper leagues preach the same thing the entire year, then come the end of the year, I offered up Crawford/Hafner -4- Beltran(I couldn't keep both Hafner and Crawford, thats the only reason I tried), and low and behold he accepted. But, as far as 1 player for Beltran straight-up??? The only person I consider is Pujols. Thats it!

I'm loathe to say I'm a "moneyball guy" since I think that implies a misunderstanding of what moneyball is about. I'm a student of sabermetrics though.

It isn't that people who study statistics don't like the stolen base. It's just that we generally feel that it needs to be used more judiciously. Run probabalities show a 75% minimum success rate for stolen bases to be helping a ball club. So players like Berkman's 7-14, or Luis Castillo last year, are ultimately hurting the club by getting caught stealing so much. A player like Beltran is exactly the base stealer sabermetricians like. He's the best percentage base stealer in baseball history right now (based on limited attempts though).

Mostly, what these numbers say is, "be careful when you try to steal, the cost is higher than you might think." Its really just a plea to players and managers to use more judgement about stealing bases for both critical situations and high success rate situations.

Mangey wrote:It isn't that people who study statistics don't like the stolen base. It's just that we generally feel that it needs to be used more judiciously. Run probabalities show a 75% minimum success rate for stolen bases to be helping a ball club. So players like Berkman's 7-14, or Luis Castillo last year, are ultimately hurting the club by getting caught stealing so much. A player like Beltran is exactly the base stealer sabermetricians like. He's the best percentage base stealer in baseball history right now (based on limited attempts though).

Mostly, what these numbers say is, "be careful when you try to steal, the cost is higher than you might think." Its really just a plea to players and managers to use more judgement about stealing bases for both critical situations and high success rate situations.

very true.

[size=10]Manny Ramirez....$20 million
Pedro Martinez....$17.5 million
Curt Schilling...$12 million (and a $2 million bonus)
Never hearing a Yankee fan chant 1918 again...priceless. [/size]

i basically agree with what Magney said, but at the same time, it's tough to quantify how distracted a pitcher by certian players with higher propensities to run.

for instance, and interesting study would be to check, say, the rays's #2 hitter's BA when crawford is on first vs. when he is not on first. at least some of that difference could be attributable to his abilty to steal 2nd, and thus should be factored in to the bennefits of his steals. so, IMO, you can probably get away with a success rate slightly blow 75 and still have a net gain provided the speedster has enough of a reputation to throw pitchers off their rhythme.

George_Foreman wrote:i basically agree with what Magney said, but at the same time, it's tough to quantify how distracted a pitcher by certian players with higher propensities to run.

for instance, and interesting study would be to check, say, the rays's #2 hitter's BA when crawford is on first vs. when he is not on first. at least some of that difference could be attributable to his abilty to steal 2nd, and thus should be factored in to the bennefits of his steals. so, IMO, you can probably get away with a success rate slightly blow 75 and still have a net gain provided the speedster has enough of a reputation to throw pitchers off their rhythme.

I actually agree with everyone who has posted in this thread. I agree that managers should use more caution when sending runners because of what the sabermetrics guys have said, but I also think that the intangible does exist, that speedsters do distract the pitcher to some extent.

The guy who thinks Edmonds is more valuable than Beltran is a guy in my league, and he, for some reason, cant see that Beltran is successful over 90% of the time when he steals.